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Making 1000 Origami Cranes

1 year and 10 months ago, I was looking for projects for a bucket list – one of my projects that I settled on was making 1000 origami cranes.

I really did not anticipate just how much work would be required. To make the 1000 cranes, plus a few dozen more just in case, it took an accumulative total of approximately 20 hours worth of folding paper. I swear I can fold these cranes in my sleep now.

This was done over the space of a few months, usually while watching a TV show or movie.

Then I popped them all in a box – and forgot about them. Okay, I didn’t forget about them, I just got preoccupied with other things.

Fast forward almost a year later, three weeks to this day, I decided it was time to finish off some of my old projects (yes, I have a few). Each day, I got my needle, and threaded through 15 cranes onto a fishing line – twice – until I had 1000 cranes on fishing lines.

Then for a solid two hours straight, broken in half by one day, I sat a little brown table with a glue gun and sat tiny drops of glue underneath each crane so that they would sit separated on the fishing line.

Next was a trip to the hardware store to buy two small, long pieces of wood and a coil of wire to make the mobile:

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Finally, after some 27 hours worth of work, I’d made 1000 cranes and hung them up. The colorful sight of them flying in the air in my rather drab apartment was worth it.

If you want a project that’s challenging but not impossible (I’m currently working towards cycling 300 km in one day before the year’s end – I haven’t set foot on a bicycle for over 4 months), making 1000 cranes is a terrific project!

What you will need should you decide you want to accept this mission:

1100 sheets of origami (in case you lose a few, give a few away, get frustrated and tear it up, or accidentally squish the bird)

Fishing line or a similar thread to hang them with

A needle or similar instrument

A mobile – depending on how you want yours to look, you can go for the ultra simplistic look of just stacking them on top of each other, or you can make them all spaced out like I did, in which case you’ll be wanting some form of adhesive to make them stay.